Origin of Cultivated Plants. Alphonse de Candolle

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ href="#n388" type="note">388 although the most detailed description, that of Theophrastus, is sufficiently confused. “The plant,” he said, “grows in Sicily” – as it does to this day – “and,” he added, “not in Greece.” It is, therefore, possible that the plants observed in our day in that country may have been naturalized from cultivation. According to Athenæus,389 the Egyptian king Ptolemy Energetes, of the second century before Christ, had found in Libya a great quantity of wild kinara, by which his soldiers had profited.

      Although the indigenous species was to be found at such a little distance, I am very doubtful whether the ancient Egyptians cultivated the cardoon or the artichoke. Pickering and Unger390 believed they recognized it in some of the drawings on the monuments; but the two figures which Unger considers the most admissible seem to me extremely doubtful. Moreover, no Hebrew name is known, and the Jews would probably have spoken of this vegetable had they seen it in Egypt. The diffusion of the species in Asia must have taken place somewhat late. There is an Arab name, hirschuff or kerschouff, and a Persian name, kunghir,391 but no Sanskrit name, and the Hindus have taken the Persian word kunjir,392 which shows that it was introduced at a late epoch. Chinese authors do not mention any Cynara.393 The cultivation of the artichoke was only introduced into England in 1548.394 One of the most curious facts in the history of Cynara cardanculus is its naturalization in the present century over a vast extent of the Pampas of Buenos Ayres, where its abundance is a hindrance to travellers.395 It is becoming equally troublesome in Chili.396 It is not asserted that the artichoke has anywhere been naturalized in this manner, and this is another sign of its artificial origin.

      Lettuce—Latuca Scariola, var. sativa.

      Botanists are agreed in considering the cultivated lettuce as a modification of the wild species called Latuca Scariola.397 The latter grows in temperate and southern Europe, in the Canary Isles, Madeira,398 Algeria,399 Abyssinia,400 and in the temperate regions of Eastern Asia. Boissier speaks of specimens from Arabia Petrea to Mesopotamia and the Caucasus.401 He mentions a variety with crinkled leaves, similar therefore to some of our garden lettuces, which the traveller Hausknecht brought with him from the mountains of Kurdistan. I have a specimen from Siberia, found near the river Irtysch, and it is now known with certainty that the species grows in the north of India, in Kashmir, and in Nepal.402 In all these countries it is often near cultivated ground or among rubbish, but often also in rocky ground, clearings, or meadows, as a really wild plant.

      The cultivated lettuce often spreads from gardens, and sows itself in the open country. No one, as far as I know, has observed it in such a case for several generations, or has tried to cultivate the wild L. Scariola, to see whether the transition is easy from the one form to the other. It is possible that the original habitat of the species has been enlarged by the diffusion of cultivated lettuces reverting to the wild form. It is known that there has been a great increase in the number of cultivated varieties in the course of the last two thousand years. Theophrastus indicated three;403 le Bon Jardinier of 1880 gives forty varieties existing in France.

      The ancient Greeks and Romans cultivated the lettuce, especially as a salad. In the East its cultivation possibly dates from an earlier epoch. Nevertheless it does not appear, from the original common names both in Asia and Europe, that this plant was generally or very anciently cultivated. There is no Sanskrit nor Hebrew name known, nor any in the reconstructed Aryan tongue. A Greek name exists, tridax; Latin, latuca; Persian and Hindu, kahn; and the analogous Arabic form chuss or chass. The Latin form exists also, slightly modified, in the Slav and Germanic languages,404 which may indicate either that the Western Aryans diffused the plant, or that its cultivation spread with its name at a later date from the south to the north of Europe.

      Dr. Bretschneider has confirmed my supposition405 that the lettuce is not very ancient in China, and that it was introduced there from the West. He says that the first work in which it is mentioned dates from A.D. 600 to A.D. 900.406

      Wild Chicory—Cichorium Intybus, Linnæus.

      The wild perennial chicory, which is cultivated as a salad, as a vegetable, as fodder, and for its roots, which are used to mix with coffee, grows throughout Europe, except in Lapland, in Marocco, and Algeria,407 from Eastern Europe to Afghanistan and Beluchistan,408 in the Punjab and Kashmir,409 and from Russia to Lake Baikal in Siberia.410 The plant is certainly wild in most of these countries; but as it often grows by the side of roads and fields, it is probable that it has been transported by man from its original home. This must be the case in India, for there is no known Sanskrit name.

      The Greeks and Romans employed this species wild and cultivated,411 but their notices of it are too brief to be clear. According to Heldreich, the modern Greeks apply the general name of lachana, a vegetable or salad, to seventeen different chicories, of which he gives a list.412 He says that the species commonly cultivated is Cichorium divaricatum, Schousboe (C. pumilum, Jacquin); but it is an annual, and the chicory of which Theophrastus speaks was perennial.

      Endive—Cichorium Endivia, Linnæus.

      The white chicories or endives of our gardens are distinguished from Cichorium Intybus, in that they are annuals, and less bitter to the taste. Moreover, the hairs of the pappus which crowns the seed are four times longer, and unequal instead of being equal. As long as this plant was compared with C. Intybus, it was difficult not to admit two species. The origin of C. Endivia is uncertain. When we received, forty years ago, specimens of an Indian Cichorium, which Hamilton named C. cosmia, they seemed to us so like the endive that we supposed the latter to have an Indian origin, as has been sometimes suggested;413 but Anglo-Indian botanists said, and continue to assert, that in India the plant only grows under cultivation.414 The uncertainty persisted as to the geographical origin. After this, several botanists415 conceived the idea of comparing the endive with an annual species, wild in the region of the Mediterranean, Cichorium pumilum, Jacquin (C. divaricatum, Schousboe), and the differences were found to be so slight that some have suspected, and others have affirmed, their specific identity. For my part, after having seen wild specimens from Sicily, and compared the good illustrations published by Reichenbach (Icones, vol. xix., pls. 1357, 1358), I am disposed to take the cultivated endives for varieties of the same species as C. pumilum. In this case the oldest name being C. Endivia, it is the one which ought to be retained, as has been done by Schultz. It resembles, moreover, a popular name common to several languages.

      The wild plant exists in the whole region, of which the Mediterranean is the centre, from Madeira,СКАЧАТЬ